


Pause for breath

by Beleriandings



Series: Just this once (everybody lives) [3]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:22:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25637989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: (AU: Just this once)After rescuing Ianto and the others from Thames House, Owen and Tosh take a moment to rest.
Relationships: Owen Harper/Toshiko Sato
Series: Just this once (everybody lives) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1826248
Comments: 16
Kudos: 44





	Pause for breath

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eberesche](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eberesche/gifts).



> Set in the same AU as my fic _Just this once_ , and takes place in the background of chapter 22. This probably won't make that much sense if you don't know that AU unfortunately. It also contains large spoilers for the Children of Earth arc in that fic and is intended mostly as an accompaniment to it, so the upshot is, I'd advise you read the main story first (linked in the series!)
> 
> This is for Eberesche, who asked for more Tosh/Owen in this AU. I hope you enjoy it!

Owen’s phone – its screen cracked at some point in the last few days, he didn’t know exactly when – said it was 9:28pm. He didn’t doubt that was true.

But the thing about time locks, he thought, was that time didn’t mean very much after a while. At least not until you’d been awake for more than forty-eight hours and busy for all of it. Without even a change in the light - or in fact in anything outside a ten-foot bubble outside of the regular flow of time - to indicate externally that you needed sleep.

Time lag, he thought blearily, stumbling a little on the linoleum floor of the hospital corridor. And it was really fucking up his brain, if he did say so himself.

Not that he said much at all as he let Tosh lead him by the arm through the hospital corridors, dutiful in their promise to Gwen. The last remaining time lock they had – at least until Tosh fixed the one Gwen had pulled from the wreckage of the tank in Thames House – was with Martha now. Owen had been using it up until now to buy time for the patients: time to analyse test results, to understand the alien virus and how to cure it. But once Martha had arrived – and once Ianto’s fever had started to break in the late morning – they’d all agreed the precious time lock and the responsibility that came with it was better in the hands of someone who’d had more than an hour or two of sleep in the last week.

It was true that Owen was falling asleep on his feet, bleary-eyed and dizzy with it under the fluorescent hospital lights. But now it came to it, now he was relegated to the break room sofa with Tosh who was almost asleep too he felt his heart quicken, everything he’d been pushing down these last few days rising up and threatening to spill.

He only realised he’d sat down on the sofa and immediately started crying when Tosh sat up with him, a nervous hand on his back. “Owen!” she said as he leaned his elbows on his knees and sobbed into his hands. “Oh god Owen, are you okay?”

“I’m _fine_ ” Owen gritted out, wincing as he shifted and sent a bolt of pain through the days-old gunshot wound at his thigh. “Ugh… I’m fine...”

“...No you’re not” she said with a frown, beginning to rub small circles on his back. “Because _I’m_ not, either. No one could be, after all this.”

He looked at her, face hot and swollen with tears. She looked as exhausted as he felt, wrung out and upset and a mess, but he felt a swell of affection so intense it almost hurt. He reached out and wrapped his hand in her freshly bandaged one, their fingers entwining. “I was so bloody _scared_ , Tosh” he admitted, avoiding her direct gaze and shaking his head. “The whole time we were working to save Ianto, I was so scared it wasn’t going to work, that I’d lose him...” he swallowed down another sob. “And he’s not out of the woods yet. We don’t know what that thing does, not really. None of us have a fucking clue what the long-term effects will be.” He swallowed, knowing that having to worry about long-term effects was a best-case scenario for Ianto as things stood.

He saw Tosh’s jaw tighten with worry for a moment, before she forced herself to breathe out. “True” she agreed. “But the nurses will take care of him, and Gwen’s taking a shift sitting up with him. And Jack will be back soon...” she laughed weakly, sadly. “I’m sure he’ll enjoy the chance to fuss at Ianto’s bedside. And if anything changes, Martha-”

“-Promised to send someone to wake me, yeah, yeah I know” he said with a sigh. “And there’s all those other people too.” He shook his head, thinking about how it had been earlier; how he’d walked through the marble halls of Thames House in his bulky hazard suit, eerily alone yet not. Enclosed in his little bubble of time while around him the building’s workers were frozen in their death throes, scrabbling at the doors and at the walls, gasping for air. How he’d been through, searching every room in the building, injecting every single one with the rudimentary vaccine – barely worthy of the name, really just a hastily-made cocktail of antibodies made by Ianto’s white blood cells that Owen had cultured in a petri dish.

How those people had all struggled and screamed when he’d started time for them again, fighting against him. How many injuries there had been in the crush at the main doors. Not just the politicians and civil servants who had allowed this to happen, but the cleaners and security guards and technicians who were blameless, all the inhabitants of the building climbing over each other to try to save their own lives.

Regardless, he’d given each one a dose of his vaccine. No one deserved to die that way, and anyway, Owen was a doctor; it wasn’t his job to make those decisions.

He’d only just had enough of it, scraping by by a few doses.

Ianto had been the first test case, the most advanced infection if only because of the time they’d taken trying to get Jack to let go of him. Owen didn’t think he’d ever forget how Jack had clung to Ianto even as they’d both drawn in their final laboured breaths, holding each other on the checked marble floor.

At the thought of it Owen clutched Tosh’s arm closer, hunching his shoulders and letting out another sob.

Her free arm came up around his back, tucking her face into his shoulder. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay” she whispered like a mantra, voice hitching with tears too now. “Let’s just get some sleep… Martha and the other doctors and the nurses will keep them all alive… the worst is over...”

“You don’t know that.”

“No.” She pressed her temple against his, leaning heavily against him. “But Owen, you need to sleep. The last time you slept was an hour in that cell.” She shuddered, before collecting herself a moment later. “You’re no use to any of them this way.”

The breath he’d been holding came out in a rush. “Yeah” he said. In truth, so much had happened since that he’d almost forgotten their earlier kidnapping, with his single-minded focus on saving the Thames House patients; it all seemed like so long ago now, but in reality it had been less than a week since the explosion in the Hub. “I know…” she was right of course; she usually was, one way or the other. But still. He relaxed a little in her arms, letting her lay him back down on the scratchy, threadbare upholstery, fingers stroking his hair as much to soothe herself as him he thought.

She curled up beside him and the warmth of her at his side was a comfort. He could feel the beat of both their hearts where they pressed together. They were both silent for a moment, staring up at the suspended tile ceiling and just listening to each other breathe. Now he was lying down, Owen did feel calmer, feeling incipient sleep weighing down his limbs, soon to pass out from sheer exhaustion.

Tosh’s voice spoke close to his ear a moment later, low and sleepy. “What you said back there...” she said, “about what you told Jack.”

He blinked, for a moment too tired to remember what she meant. When he did, his eyes opened a little wider, tears starting at the corners. “...Oh.”

“About how you became a doctor because you wanted to save people. Well...” she patted his arm. “Today you did.”

He sighed, remembering their time together in the time-locked lab earlier (and was it still the same day? Owen had all but lost track, with the endless hours filled with fear and desperation) and how he’d poured out his heart to her then. And he thought of Ianto as he’d last seen him, lying under heavy sedation in intensive care a few floors away. How young he’d looked, and how Owen had thought then that if he couldn’t accomplish anything else, then at least perhaps in a kind world he could save this one man who had somehow become like a little brother to him. “Well. So far” he said, swallowing the lump in his throat.

Tosh pushed her head under his chin, leaning into him, and he pressed his face to her hair. “So far” she agreed, voice buzzing against his skin. “But there’s nothing we can do but wait now, until tomorrow.”

“Until tomorrow” he said sleepily, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head.

And just like that, awkwardly cramped together on an uncomfortable sofa in an unfamiliar room, it was not long before they’d both fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep.


End file.
